Gravida
by First Weaver
Summary: Sequel to Affinitas Secretum.  Kenshin asks Hiko for a favor.
1. Gravida

Here is the sequel all you reviewers were asking for! There may be more short stories in the future along this vein. I love Hiko, I swear I'm getting obsessed with that man.

I do not own Rurouni Kenshin.

* * *

Mouth pressed against his palm, Hiko watched Himura Kaoru in his garden through the window glass. She caressed Hiko's tulips, stared entranced at a resting butterfly, turned her face up to the warmth of the sun; a perfectly enchanting picture of a lovely maiden.

Hiko was disgusted.

"What do you think?" Kenshin asked softly, also watching his wife from a perch on the window seat.

"There's no question," Hiko said. Kenshin knew that. "Why are you here? This is a simple situation. Either you forgive her for the infidelity, or you leave her."

"Shishou, that's the thing," Kenshin said, big eyes earnest and sincere. "It shouldn't be possible, I _know _that, but I don't think she was… unfaithful."

Hiko was speaking before Kenshin even finished. "Don't be naïve. You were fighting. She had a fling." He glanced at the glowing young woman with an expression of distaste. "Either keep her or don't."

"I'm just asking you to look," Kenshin pleaded. "I don't trust my own judgment when it comes to Kaoru."

"If I do, will you go away?"

"Immediately," Kenshin promised.

Heaving a long-suffering sigh, Hiko brushed past his hopeful young _deshi_ and out the back door. Kaoru looked up with a big grin on her face, and her _ki_ matched her expression. She was, inexplicably, pleased to see him. "Hello, Mr. Hiko."

"Hiko-_san_," he corrected irritably. "I hear you're pregnant."

"The tests have all been positive," Kaoru said cheerfully. "But I think Kenshin wanted you to check and make sure the baby was healthy?"

Hiko shot Kenshin a sharp look; the little punk's expression was angelically innocent.

"Sure," he said sourly. He reached out and took her hand, threading his _ki_ into the radiant glow of Kaoru's. She was buoyant, and sparkly as a glass of Champagne.

He found the little tiny spark of life, and took a moment to be with it, learning a little of the soul that was a little of his father, a little of his mother, and a lot of original.

Then, to his shock and surprise, that itty bitty existence was _aware_. If he had to describe the sensation, it was recognition and… acknowledgement?

_Hello, Grandfather._

As he sometimes did, Hiko had a sudden vision of the future: A strong, proud young man, mystical and unapologetic, the best of dragon magic in a blade-slim maelstrom of humanity.

He laughed out loud.

"It's a boy," he said with relish. "He's going to look exactly like you—" he said to Kenshin, who absolutely lit up with joy. "And he has your eyes," he told Kaoru, suddenly feeling a great deal more gregarious toward the new mother of his race. "And Kenshin?" He smirked.

"Yes, Shishou?"

"You _deserve_ him."


	2. Small and White

The Scottish evening was cool and misty, the smell of heather strong upon the air; Kenshin took a deep, fortifying breath, reveling in the sense of power that permeated one of the great dragon homelands. It sank into his very bones, thrumming with the promise of life and strength.

It had been decided that Kaoru should deliver here, where even the earth and air would lend their energies to her. A hospital was out of the question—Kenshin had already had to wipe an obstetrician's memory after an ultrasound revealed a pair of wings and a tail.

How on earth was Kenshin supposed to know that dragon fetuses changed form in the womb? He'd only been a hatchling himself before the massacre.

Kaoru had done so well during the delivery. It had been quick and easy—easier than it should have been, based on what Kenshin knew of humans delivering their young, but Shishou had been there with healing and analgesic magics, helping bring his godson into the world. Kenshin's Master had taken an unhealthy, almost obsessive interest in Kaoru and the baby, to the point that Kenshin had snapped that he needed to find his _own_ maiden.

The warm little bundle in his arms stirred, and Kenshin rocked gently, purring deep in his chest to soothe his newborn son. Kenji snuggled closer, sighing as he sank back into sleep.

He was fascinated by the tiny person in his arms. Red and wrinkled, Kenji had a fine cap of silky red hair, and eyes of a deep sea-blue. A perfect little hand curled around Kenshin's forefinger, white and fragile against his father's sword-callused skin, tipped with miniature needle-point claws. His soul was a spark of fire, warm and cinnamon-gold like his mother's.

Together in the quiet misty evening, father and son watched the moon rise.


	3. Free Falling

Thank you to all the reviewers of the last chapters: skenshingumi, Syolen, SRAS9, AltheaM, Emi Violet, donhisiewen, Jasmine blossom625, HaNa, kokoronagomu, and crayontesla.

I do not own Rurouni Kenshin.

* * *

"Kenji," Hiko glowered at the serpentine form, settled high in the branch of the property's most ancient, massive old tree, "You are _not_ going to like it if I have to come up there after you."

Tottering as he got to his paws, Kenji opened his maw and displayed his four-inch, flickering tongue. The effect was rather less impressive in this form, but the sentiment behind it was the same: _nya nya nya nya!_

Never again. It didn't matter how big Kenshin's eyes got, or how Kaoru begged; he was never babysitting their—their _hellion_—ever again!

"That's it." Shedding his sandals, Hiko unsheathed his claws and dashed up the tree.

Kenji emitted an alarmed squawk, wobbling a bit on his spindly toddler legs as his tissue-paper wings unfurled, trying to stay balanced on the stroppy limb.

He never had a chance.

Catching the warm, wriggly body in both hands, Hiko decided to give the curious kit a little taste of his own medicine. He wanted heights? Hiko would give him heights!

Drawing back, Hiko tossed the kit skyward, well away from any branches he might grab and dropped lightly out of the tree. He waited a second or two as the flightless kit tried to muddle through on his underdeveloped wings, then dropped like a stone out of the sky.

He reached out and caught the kit neatly, prepared for hysteria or even shocked catatonia.

What he got was a grinning red-headed toddler, both human arms wrapped around his neck as he squealed, "Again! Grandpa, again again again!"

Peeling the hyperactive child off his neck to inspect at arm's length, Hiko concluded, "You're completely insane."

"Again again again!"


	4. History is Written by the Victors

Thank you to the reviewers: Althea M, Syolen, kawaii-96, Emi Violet, kokoronagomu, LimeGrass, and t42n24t2.

* * *

"Momma," Kenji said as she was tucking his covers up to his chin, warm and snug. "Tell me a story."

Momma smiled and sat on the edge of his bed. "Which one do you want to hear?"

"The Dragon and Saint George!" Kenji said authoritatively. That one was his most favorite!

Momma groaned and rolled her eyes. "That one? Again? Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

"Alright." Momma shifted, pulling one foot up under her leg. "Once upon a time, long ago, before the age of men and machines, dragons roamed the earth."

Kenji sat up on one elbow, the better to hear every word. All the best stories started out with 'once upon a time'.

"The strongest and most fierce of the dragons was the mighty Katanji, red as a volcano and with eyes like a flame. He had the greatest hoard of all dragons, with pearls the size of your fist like moonbeams, rare flowers, big glittery crystal pillars that made rainbows on the walls of his cave."

Kenji thought of his own hoard: the slice of polished amethyst from the Museum of Natural History, the feather he'd gotten from Aunt Misao's pet peacock, his first baby tooth, the book from Grandpa that was his first real present, the piece of embossed leather that had been Lucky's collar before she went to Heaven. All of it was safe in a little wooden box under his bed, hidden behind a too-small coat and the strongest locking spell Kenji knew. Hoards were _special_.

"But this dragon was so great and fierce, his reputation so terrifying, that all the knights of the kingdom came to challenge him," Momma said. "They wore big, heavy, clanking armor that shone in the sun, and they had massive broadswords, smeared with the dried blood of hundreds of Katanji's kin!"

Kenji hissed. A deeply ingrained genetic memory did not like knights _beards and hard blue eyes and the smell of steel_.

"Katanji killed all these knights with a swipe of his mighty tail, not even leaving his cave," Momma said. "But one day a knight came who was the king of knights, the strongest, the most fearless! The humans believed he was even blessed by God. His name was—"

"George," Kenji said with furious relish.

Momma grinned. "That's right, George. He stood at the mouth of Katanji's cave and called, 'In the name of God, foul beast, come forth and do battle with me!' And do you know what Katanji said?"

Kenji was up on his knees now, bouncing a bit. He _loved_ this part! "He said, 'No worm of the earth am I, but the lord of the skies. Come if you dare!'"

"That's right!" Momma said, and she ruffled his hair. "So Katanji came out of his cave and oh, how those champions fought! For three nights and three days they both received terrible wounds, and the whole earth shook from Katanji's fire and George's sword!

"Finally, on the third day, when they were both worn to the bone, Katanji asked, 'Knight, why do you battle with me? I have harmed neither maidens, nor castles, nor livestock; what have I done that we should duel so?' And George said, 'I came for immortality in the service of God, dragon.' And Katanji said, 'I will give you what you desire.'

"He laid his great head down, as if preparing for the death-blow; and Saint George, thinking that the spawn of Satan had been cowed by his righteousness, raised his sword in the sign of the cross to pray. And in that moment of weakness, Katanji bit off his head!"

Kenji squealed with delight. "And that was the end of the evil Saint George!"

"That's right," Momma said. "All the little baby dragons were safe from the bad knights. Now it's time for _my _little dragon to go to sleep!"

* * *

Kenshin couldn't help but grin, watching Kaoru dim the lights and tuck the conforter securely around Kenji's shoulders. "He's going to be heartbroken when he finds out the true story, you know."

Kaoru grinned. "I like my version better."


	5. Discord

This is different from the usual diet of fluff. A bit dark.

A brief author's note for the understanding of this odd little drabble-it does deviate a bit from canon, and may even be a bit *wince* OOC. I didn't want to bog down the actual story with this info, however, so the backstory is this:

Kenshin took his vow never to kill again after the Meiji Revolution, as in canon, but broke it when Kenji was kidnapped (as mentioned below, will be writing that oneshot next.) After a great deal of soul-searching he decides that he will from now on only kill when there is no other option. My defense of this attitude is that in canon, Kenshin has been shown to not mind maiming (example Gohei)-and Watsuki never deals with the fact that while Kenshin did not technically kill Shishio, Mummy Man did have to die in order to be stopped. There are some truly awful people in this world who just need to leave it, and if Kenshin could come to terms with that without losing his soul, he would occasionally feel compelled to deal that justice.

Heavy stuff! Questions, comments, and disagreements are welcome. Thanks to the reviewers of the last chapter: Rihannon, rhodablanche, crayontesla, OffCenterFold, Emi Violet, t42n24t2, SRAS9, donhisiewen, and kokoronagomu.

* * *

"My son is not a killer!"

"Your son is a _dragon_. A _predator_. And he'll be a murderer if we don't move to curb the bloodlust now!"

"And you would know this from personal experience."

Kenji shivered and drew his knees up to his chest. Mom and Dad were arguing again, and he knew he wasn't supposed to listen, but it was like watching a train wreck; he couldn't force himself to get away.

Dad's _ki_ was a seething fury, but it had stilled at Mom's last retort. Kenji nearly jumped out of his skin when Dad came sweeping out of the bedroom, trench coat flaring. It would have been melodramatic if it weren't Dad.

Rounding the corner without looking back, Dad disappeared down the stairs and out the front door.

Nervously, Kenji peeked into his parents' bedroom. Mom was leaning against the bureau, running her hand through her hair with a frustrated sigh. She looked tired, but she smiled when she saw him. "Hey, big guy. You okay?"

Kenji rushed over and gave her a hug. "Is Dad mad at me?"

"No!" Mom's reply was instant, pulling him back by his shoulders to look him in the eye. "Your dad and I both love you very much. Although you _weren't _supposed to be listening."

Flushing, Kenji stared at his bare feet but muttered defiantly, "You guys won't tell me anything."

Sighing again, Mom pulled him over to the love seat and sat him down beside her. "Things are complicated right now," she said. "But everything's going to be okay."

"What were you arguing about?"

"Adult stuff."

"I'm an adult, by dragon laws. Grandpa said so."

"That's… part of what we're fighting about." Mom said, rubbing her thumb against Kenji's knuckle. Her fingers were cool against his skin. "He wants to take you hunting."

"We go hunting all the time," Kenji objected. The freezer was full of venison from hours spent in the woods with Dad, quietly stalking until the _pounce_, and the swift application of _battoujutsu_.

"Not for deer," Mom said quietly. "He wants to take you hunting for… bad guys. When he goes out with Grandpa Hiko."

"Oh." _Oh!_

Kenji knew that there were some seriously evil people out there—he'd been kidnapped, once, and only rescued by Dad and Grandpa Hiko—and Mom, laying on the fury like he'd never seen. He couldn't remember ever being so frightened in his life.

But he also remembered when his little cousin Shinya had been bullied in school, a couple of weeks ago. He had started a fight (that Mom and Dad did _not_ know about, _thank you very much!_) to get the three older kids to back off. The black, ugly amusement in their hearts had infuriated him, someplace deep down, a repository that collected every ugly insult thrown at a friend, every media report of the shooting of an innocent.

He nearly always agreed with Mom when she and Dad fought. But…

There was evil out there. And a deep, dark part of him was all too interested in _hunting_ it.

"But you don't have to worry about it," Mom said with a hug and a kiss on his hair. "Go brush your teeth and go to bed, okay?"

* * *

Sleep was slow to come. There was a red hunger in his brain, something that neither an hour of videogames nor a week's worth of history homework had been able to subdue. He tossed in his too-warm bed, bored and restless and _something—_

A tap on the door. Kenji rolled over to tell Mom _again_ that he didn't need any hot milk, he wasn't some kind of baby—

But it was Dad standing in the door, and he was holding Kenji's _katana_.

"Get dressed," he said.

And Kenji's soul roared.


	6. Hostage

Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter, and for all your constructive feedback. Here is the awaited next chapter of _Gravida_. I do not own Rurouni Kenshin!

* * *

Kenshin still had nightmares about that day.

"_Kenshin, did you pick up Kenji? I've been at the school for half an hour and I can't find him."_

He hadn't even bothered to take the car, just ran the entire six miles from his office to the school, leaping rooftop to rooftop to avoid traffic.

"_I'm sorry, Mr. Himura, but the man who came to pick up Kenji-Mr. Austin?-had a permission slip with your signature. We thought you'd sent him…."_

He'd followed the psychic link he had with his child, fuzzy and distant as though Kenji was sleeping, or drugged—considering the muted bursts of fear, most likely drugged. He'd never been able to forgive himself for not sensing it earlier. He could sense that Kenji lived, but not where he was.

"_You know who took him, _baka deshi_. And you know what they will do to him if we don't take him back_._"_

It had been a mix of magic and espionage that had given them the location—a drop of his blood and Kaoru's dripped on a nest of hair pulled from Kenji's brush to give them the tracking essence of the boy's soul, and a set of bones to roll for divination.

"_A place of shadowed light,"_ Shishou read the portents with a jaundiced eye, his mouth set in a scowl. _"In a heart of verge, guarded by bones of earth…"_ he was already walking to the door when he said, _"Central Park."_

A GPS took them from their country New York home to the noisy crowds of the city; a doctored permit and a bare-faced bluff got them through the gate: **CLOSED FOR CONSTRUCTION**.

Once past the barrier that was mystical as well as physical, Kenshin could sense Kenji's _ki_ properly—and that of Kenji's captors. It was like a tiny, guttering candle flame behind a wreath of bilious smoke; fighting so fiercely, but any moment now… snuffed.

Like sharks on a trail of blood, Kenshin and Hiko followed that sense of miasma and fragile purity. At a dead run they broke into a clearing that was a scene straight out of Hell.

"_Permissum vox of ephemeral repleo mihi quod servo mihi ex plaga of nex…__"_

A tall, cadaverous man, so gaunt that his glittering eyes seemed to peer malevolently out from two deep caves, stood at the head of a makeshift altar; apparently a low table draped with black velvet, Kenji lay naked and bound, his eyes glazed with terror and drugs. His split lip was bloodied, and an angry purple bruise was coming up on his chest and stomach. Above his head they had placed a golden pentagram that only gleamed to the eye; Kenshin could sense blood, and pain, and tainted unnatural long life. The symbol seemed almost _aware_… and hungry.

Black-robed and rigged with tall, boxy, ragged black head gear, the head sorcerer was not alone. Near a dozen of his acolytes clutched chalices, or any hollow that would pass for a chalice, eager for a sip of coppery arterial alchemy that would extend their wretched lives. They chanted along brokenly with the dark high priest's Latin, faces turned downward to Kenji's in an obsessive ecstasy.

Kenshin could read their hearts, see their memories; these men had performed this ritual before, and there had been no one there to stop them, these cowards of the lowest echelon. An unconscious snarl tugged his lips back from his teeth, and his _katana_ loosened with a click in its sheath. Shishou was a barely-leashed maelstrom of fury beside him.

With a resounding _crack_! of aged white oak against skull, Kaoru beat them both to the punch.

"_Get your filthy hands off my child!"_

Kenshin administered careful draughts of antidote to his sputtering, trembling kit, while his wife beat out her fury and Shishou made permanently sure that the kidnappers neither reproduced, nor spoke, nor—eventually—breathed again. Shishou _liked_ Kenji.

Kenshin made no effort to hide the carnage from Kenji. Human children might fear the sight of blood and death, but for a dragon naught else but the assurance of his enemies' utter destruction would provide a true feeling of security.

And then his wife and his child were both in his arms, Kaoru's eyes welling with tears as the slim, bony form of their son snuggled into her breast. Both of them safe, warded by a circle of magic and steel.

He never planned to let them go again.

"_Daddy, I wanna go home."_

* * *

*Latin translation-"Let the power of the ephemeral fill me and protect me from the scourge of death." Please note that it was pasted into an online translator, as I know absolutely nothing about Latin. Any comments for improvement would me much appreciated.


End file.
